Kiruna

Kiruna is the northern Swedish town that everything in Lapland routes through: the airport, the railway from Stockholm and Luleå, the E10 west to Abisko and the Norwegian coast, and the E45 south. For a route it is fuel, a big supermarket and a hire car; what makes it unusual is that the town is in the middle of moving itself east to get out of the way of the iron mine, and that affects a driver directly, because the road network changes year by year and Trafikverket's planning papers describe a rerouted E10 north of the town for the same reason.

Timing: two hours is enough for the new centre and the view of the mine; a night if you are catching the morning train or driving on to Abisko in the dark season. Swedavia puts the airport about 9 km from the centre, which is a short taxi or the airport bus. Quiet is September and early October, after the summer and before the aurora charters.

The Abisko leg is the one to think about. Road and rail run the same corridor along Torneträsk, and SVT has reported both closed at once in a storm on avalanche grounds, with Abisko's visitors stranded until the line reopened after midnight. In winter leave Kiruna with a full tank, food and no fixed arrival time on the other side; in summer it is an easy drive. No journey time is stated here because neither the road authority's traffic page nor the train operators' pages gave one today.

Practical line: fuel and supermarkets in town, nothing of size west of here until Narvik. Winter tyres are mandatory in season and the plough convoy on the E10 is a normal event, not an emergency.